I was having a lot of latency issues using my computer's optical out to my receiver / amp. Usually when doing audio, I use headphones to avoid bleed, and there was an enormous delay between my mike and headphones.

I found putting the phones into the mixer (which is the input) removed any latency. Even with Asio (and all digital/coax), it seems USB in traversing the bus out throughput the motherboard's RealTek sound chip will cause a lag.

Though I'm not found of the complexity or price (compared to a small mixer) the M-Audio Fast Track Ultra seems to do the best job for me. I have a Ketron SD4 which had really convincing acoustic sounds, so the ability to mix that MIDI with RealTracks (and audio) is essential. Being able to record all these sources to .WAV without unnatural acts is also a nice thing.

It took a lot of trial and error to get this set up to work this way. I know a lot about computers, but the M-Audio is more geared toward audio engineers (which I am not.)

Jan - 12 Core AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
32GB DDR4
Win 10 64-bit
Samsung m.2 SSD Boot drive,other SSD internal and USB drives.
MOTO 2
Ketron SD4,SD1000
Yamaha RX-v381amp
VB-Audio virtual cables